Features
Harriet Zaidman’s latest book focuses on a bygone era that also incorporates some well-known Winnipeggers in the story
By MARTIN ZEILIG In her latest novel for young adults, Winnipeg author Harriet Zaidman reinforces the role of ice hockey as being, in her words, “synonymous with Canada.”
No doubt about it: Hockey is, indeed, a defining cultural entity within our country.
“Canadian boys have chased the dream of making it in the NHL since the league began in 1917,” Zaidman, a retired teacher/librarian and book reviewer for the Winnipeg Free Press, said during a recent interview with The Jewish Post & News.
That’s Dale Melnyk’s hope in “Second Chances”, published this year by Red DeerPress.
After the 14-year-old’s stellar defence of the goal crease for the Perth Community Centre team in the 1954-55 season, he thinks his objective to follow fellow Winnipegger Terry Sawchuk into professional hockey might become a reality.
But Dale’s life has become complicated.
His mother has died unexpectedly, leaving his family in tatters; his father decides that Dale has to give up hockey to help care for his little brother and do chores.
“His best friend, Paul, is the backup goalie on their team,” Zaidman said during the interview.
“He keeps the puck out using the new butterfly method, the same as Detroit backup Glenn Hall, while Dale is a stand-up goalie like Sawchuk, throwing his body left and right to defend.”
But Paul has just announced he will be moving to his grandparents’ house. He has to have a different address to qualify for the starter position on the Northwood Community Centre team.
“Dale feels intensely achy and exhausted,” the author writes.
“This unwelcome news makes him realize he’s missed the clues that Paul had the same aspirations as he does.”
The aches turn into a full-blown attack of the polio virus and Dale ends up paralyzed in an iron lung.
His first thought is about hockey. It’s April now. Can he recover in time to make the tryouts in November?
Can he overcome his dad’s edict? Can sheer will get Dale back on top of the world? What does the future hold if he can’t?
Dale’s hero is the famed Terry Sawchuk, the son of a Ukrainian immigrant tinsmith, who lived across the Red River, in circumstances similar to Dale’s family.
“Despite an unbelievable number of serious injuries, which today would be intolerable, Sawchuk was the best goalie in the NHL, something young readers should know about,” Zaidman said.
“An ordinary kid, from the humblest background, could make it big, if he had the talent and drive. This is part of Manitoba’s hockey history. It should be remembered and honoured.”
The book also highlights the showdown between Montreal and Detroit in the last game of the Stanley Cup series in 1955. The author introduces famous players whose names are part of NHL lore: Bernie Geoffrion, Alex Delvecchio, Floyd Curry, Marcel Pronovost and Gordie Howe.
She also writes about the controversy surrounding the suspension of Maurice Richard for the last part of the season and the playoffs.
“I wanted to recreate the tension fans felt in imagining the play as it was meticulously described by broadcaster Foster Hewitt over the radio,” said Zaidman, who lives in Garden City with her husband, Cecil Rosner, a retired CBC Television producer.
“I wanted to highlight local hockey too with mention of community centres that existed at that time – Perth in West Kildonan and Northwood in the North End of Winnipeg.
“Hockey tryouts and games didn’t start until November because youth hockey was played on outdoor rinks, which could not be flooded until the water was cold enough to freeze solid.”
It was a volunteer effort, both adults and kids getting the rink ready for the season, she writes.
“The coaches’ work included hanging out the uniforms to get rid of the mothball smell,” Zaidman said.
“Spectators had to stand out in the cold to watch games; frozen noses and toes were the norm. Equipment was substandard, repaired and reused year after year, but the kids played hard.”
The competition was fierce, as the rivalry between the teams and between Dale and his friend Paul showed.
One of the characters included in this novel is Vince Leah (“Uncle Vince”), who was a sportswriter and then editor for The Winnipeg Tribune newspaper. Leah was an important figure in local sports.
“He was a typical North Ender from modest circumstances,” the author said.
“He also overcame polio, just like the novel’s young main character. Leah’s character helps give Dale the chance to play hockey again, as well as other ways of staying involved in sports by developing his writing skills for a potential future career as a sports reporter.”
Another historical character in the novel is Dr. Percy Barsky, who developed polio at age 21.
His experience as a patient motivated him to become a pediatrician and help others.
“Many Winnipeg families recall the attention and kindness he gave children from the 1950s until his death in 1989,” Zaidman writes in the Acknowledgments section.
This young novel teaches today’s children about the history of hockey in Winnipeg and Canada.
It shows how they can develop a greater appreciation for the work it took to bring hockey “to the advanced state it is today.”
“I also wanted to write about how the terrible virus changed children’s hopes and dreams, and how science saved future generations from fear, disability, and death,” she writes in the novel’s concluding chapter, Interview with Harriet Zaidman.
“Learning from history— the reason I write.”
“Second Chances”
by Harriet Zaidman
(Red Deer Press 287 pg $14.95)
Features
Donald Trump, Israel, and a New Political World
By HENRY SREBRNIK There are a lot of foolish Jews in Canada and the United States. They have voted for, among other fair-weather friends, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris (all now thankfully out of office) and Justin Trudeau (hopefully also soon on the way out). They also despise Benjamin Netanyahu.
But October 7, 2023, the Hamas attack on Israel and the horrific and pervasive antisemitism we have seen across both countries, led to November 5, 2024, the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. And change has already begun.
There will be fewer mealy-mouthed statements about how “Israel has the right to defend itself” while refusing the Jewish state genuine military support and, in the case of Canada, supporting the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for the Prime Minister of Israel, who along with Yoav Gallant, the former Minister of Defence, was charged with being genocidal war criminals, on a par with Milosevic, Putin, numerous other satraps, and perhaps even Hitler!
Trump’s victory has given Israel political breathing space, and without the American foreign policy establishment breathing down its neck, it has allowed Jerusalem to continue degrading Hamas’ terrorist base in Gaza and to neutralize Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Syria’s tyrant, Bashir al-Assad, was quickly overthrown – though we must be careful not to regard the victors, backed by Turkey, as “democrats” – and this means that the Iranian regime has lost its most important ally and its land route to Lebanon.
With Russia distracted by its war in Ukraine and Hezbollah weakened by Israel to the point where it lost its ability to defend Iranian interests, the Syrian rebels were able to turn the tide of a war that most of the world thought had ended years ago.
Tehran believed the assaults launched against the Jewish state by its terrorist proxies would fundamentally alter the balance of power in the region. It has indeed – but not in the way Iran hoped!
The ring of fire that Iran had planned to establish around Israel has been dismantled with the loss of the single most important link in the chain, Syria. Hezbollah is now locked in an isolated enclave in south and west Lebanon. Hamas is transformed from a well-equipped terrorist army based in tunnels into a scattered armed underground.
Assad’s downfall was made possible by a year of Israeli strikes on Iranian targets, military industries and air defence systems in Syria. Netanyahu warned during a meeting at the headquarters of the Israel Defense Forces in Tel Aviv December 10 that if the new Syrian regime befriends Iran, Israel will take decisive action against it.
“If this regime allows Iran to regain its foothold in Syria, or allows the transfer of Iranian weapons or any other weapons to Hezbollah, or attacks us, we will respond forcefully and we will exact a heavy price from it,” he declared. “What happened to the previous regime will happen to this regime as well,” he warned. Israel has no intention of interfering in Syria’s internal affairs but would take action it deemed necessary for its security.
Indeed, Israel took advantage of the chaos in Syria to quickly damage and destroy much of that country’s air force and navy. Netanyahu authorized the Israeli Air Force to bomb “strategic military capabilities left by the Syrian army so that they would not fall into the hands of the jihadists.” The aerial assault targeted air force bases, including entire squadrons of fighter jets.
Israel is systematically dismantling Iran’s axis of evil, Netanyahu said, referring to the Islamic Republic’s attempt via its proxies to build a “path of terror from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea: from Iran to Iraq, from Iraq to Syria, and from Syria to Lebanon.”
As for Trump, unlike his Democratic presidential predecessors, he will not engage the region with a new round of appeasement of Iran or by pressuring Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians or any of its other enemies. This will be a non-starter in an administration packed with friends of the Jewish state.
Trump exercised a “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran through heavy sanctions during his first term, which included the United States withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear deal in May 2018. His nominees for senior positions in his forthcoming administration suggest that he intends to remain tough on the Iranian regime.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Features
From One Border to Another
By ORLY DREMAN A year ago at Chanuka/Christmas I wrote an article titled “From Darkness to Light” (from-darkness-to-light-december). I cannot believe a year has passed, yet the descriptions of what’s happening in Israel are the same: national trauma, nightmares, physical pain, people still depressed and worried, hostages being murdered in captivity. The state of the nation can be pictured as a broken heart – immersed in collective sadness. The whole country is one big monument. I have a huge Israeli flag by my front door because every few days there is a a funeral journey where everyone stands at the side of the road with flags to escort another fallen soldier on his last way to the cemetery. Girlfriends do not meet at coffeeshops. Instead we meet at these funeral journeys.
On the other hand, citizens continue to volunteer by sending food packages to soldiers and helping the tens of thousands of families whose loved ones are in the front and more.
Since a couple of weeks ago was the one year anniversary of the return of some of the hostages in the only deal to date, there are still one hundred hostages – women, men, and children – including the elderly, all still being held in Gaza. The films that Hamas releases to put pressure on citizens so that they, in turn, will put pressure on the government, show the hostages looking emaciated and pale, with black under their eyes -skinny, starved, depressed, crying and begging to be saved. They are alone in the dark, dozens of meters underground, sitting in metal cages in dark tunnels closed from both sides by metal gates, less than the height of a human and the width of a single mattress. They are not allowed to shower so they have skin diseases- inhuman conditions which they are still experiencing and which are crimes against humanity. The hostages who will return in the future will not be the same as those who were released after 55 days. For our selfish government the hostages are just a burden reminding them of their big failure on Oct. 7th 2023. If they do not sign an agreement to bring them home now, then we can all understand that, God forbid, if a massacre like the one that happened on October 7 were to happed again – on any of our borders (being surrounded by Muslim enemies), there is nobody to save us. It is hard to grasp this reality. The rehabilitation of our society cannot happen before all the hostages are returned. Seasons are passing, holidays are happening, and the winter has begun again. The families of the hostages are traveling around the world meeting kings and presidents and begging for help, but our government is hard-hearted. Bibi wants to “win” the war, keep fighting in Gaza, and forget about our hostages.
Most of the children in Israel are suffering from anxiety attacks, avoid leaving home, do not interact socially, are nervous, and do not eat or sleep well. They hear sirens, their parents are recruited to the army, they have been evacuated from their homes and moved several times – having to change schools and friends. The events of Oct 7: the murders, the kidnappings, the brutality, the length of the war, the number of soldiers and citizens killed, the wounded- all of these influence the children dramatically. At our home we were playing a game with our grandchildren. They would come up with a letter and the adults had to guess what word the child was thinking of. A granddaughter gave the letter H. After us giving up and not being able to guess the word, she said it was “Hamas.” It appears that is what children are preoccupied with. When we invite new friends, before they decide to come, they always ask if we have a shelter. (Thank God we do). Our granddaughter, 9 years old, was asked why they study Arabic at school. She replied: ”So we can understand what the terrorists are saying.” Children are afraid to walk in the house alone, they are in constant fear and return to sleeping with their parents. It is a state of chronic stress. We are a post traumatic generation. People are much less happy than in the past. Since we have several memorial days during the year when the siren is sounded and we observe a minute of silence, like on Holocaust day, Memorial day for all the soldiers killed in the wars trying to save the country, and Oct. 7th day- children don’t know whether to run to the shelter when the siren sounds or to stand still.
There is a ceasefire right now with Lebanon in the north, but the chances of it holding are 50-50. We just signed that cease fire and another front from Syria opened, because the president’s regime there was overthrown by Al Qaeda/ISIS rebels. We do not know what to expect. After a year and a quarter, we stopped hearing war planes, but now, because of Syria, we hear them again.
We are lacking 10,000 soldiers. Men in their forties who were already released from the army are getting called again. The wives of 15,000 reservists have been carrying the burden of their prolonged absences for 15 months already. They are losing income and paying a heavy price for parenting alone and not enjoying the company of a spouse. Many have become widowed. Business closing signs are all over the place. We owe them so much.
Sixty thousand citizens were evacuated from their homes in northern Israel 15 months ago. They are dispersed in 100 hotels around the country. Whole communities were dismantled and their members became refugees. People lost all their stable, familiar circles. Thousands of homes and roads were destroyed and must be rebuilt. Tourism is dead in the whole country. The government of Lebanon is a hostage in the hands of Hezbollah, which took over that country. The U.N soldiers are afraid to do anything against Hezbollah’s wishes or they will be killed. Hence they have became collaborators with the terrorists.
At the central square in Teheran, Iran there is a clock counting time backwards for the time remaining until the year 2040, the year Iran says it intends to annihilate Israel. We cannot wait passively for that year so, hopefully, with a new administration in Washington we will have the opportunity to remove the tyrant regime in Iran.
It has become “cool” to be antisemitic and anti-Israel around the world. The “herd” is following Muslim propaganda and lies and does not know the truth. Our government’s public relations campaign has failed. We have to get to those who don’t know enough.
Chanukka is approaching and our lights are the volunteers in the hospitals, in the field, nursing homes… those visiting the elderly, the lonely, the families who need help. This is what gives us comfort: the spirit of solidarity. This is what makes us a great nation – our people. The real Israeli who shares his brother’s pain. So we must be grateful for the good things in life and maintain hope.
Happy Chanukka and Merry Christmas!
Features
The Allure of Cherry Scents in Modern Fragrance Trends
Cherry-scented perfumes have become the new darling of the fragrance world. Thanks to their fruity notes and unique ability to bring out sophistication and warmth, cherry perfumes are an emerging trend in the modern world of scents.
One of the most famous perfumes of the generation is the Tom Ford Lost Cherry and the well-loved fragrance is simply unbeatable. They’re so developed, deep, and warm. For customers looking for a more affordable option, perfumes like Ambery Cherry have found a nice middle between luxury and attainability.
Why Cherry Scents Are Having a Moment
Cherry fragrances offer sophistication, freshness, and complexity. These perfumes strike a perfect balance between sweetness and adulthood, making them suitable for any occasion and mood. Cherries are a symbol of indulgence, delectability, and nostalgia. There are several fragrance users who want more than just a nice and simple scent; they’re looking for a story too.
For this reason, a lot of perfumers have gotten extra inventive with their cherry notes, including other notes that establish a unique story. Almond notes, tonka bean, smoky undertones – anything that can place wearers directly on a unique pedestal in an olfactory universe. With this newfound creativity, cherry-scented perfumes have become a genre of their own in the world of luxury perfumes.
Cherry Fragrances and the Senses
Just imagine the moment when someone with cherry fragrance sprays it on their skin. The first notes that blossom through are of tangy, sweet cherry juice. You are then transported to an orchard bathed in sunlight. That is the kind of sensory experience you get with a cherry fragrance.
They’re the right mix of elegant and playful and warm and bold. Again, the likes of Tom Ford Lost Cherry have raised the bar when it comes to making a perfect fragrance. This has, in turn, resulted in the likes of Ambery Cherry becoming easily available to the masses.
Cherry Scents as Personal Statements
Fragrances are not just some additional accessory but an extension to your personality. Cherry fragrances, with their warmth and alluring nature, allow the wearer to make some pretty unforgettable, striking statements everywhere they go. The kind of people who stop and give them a try are people who enjoy timeless elegance while remaining modern and fresh! There is something about cherry fragrances that intrigues you. You just can’t pinpoint what it is but they smell divine.
Finding the Perfect Cherry Fragrance
Given that cherry fragrances are so hot right now, you might find yourself doing a double take as you try to navigate your next move. The best way to decide is to choose one that aligns with your personal style. If your tastes run to the daring and complex, Tom Ford Lost Cherry might tickle your fancy.
If you are after a comparable experience at a more appropriate price tag, there are options like Ambery Cherry as alternatives. They make cherry perfumes accessible to everyone, no matter how deep their pockets are. This will only mean that more of us will experience and fall in love with this note.
Embrace the Cherry Trend
Cherry perfumes are for everyone but many already know this, especially now that there are affordable alternatives. For those who are regular shoppers at luxury perfume counters, don’t let this amazing scent escape your growing collection. Welcome to the beautiful world of cherry perfumes. Now that there are pocket-friendly yet luxurious editions, what is stopping you from considering them?
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